


A Child of Revolution

by lionor



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionor/pseuds/lionor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelically beautiful, devilishly precocious: how Enjolras grew up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Child of Revolution

His parents never quite knew what to do with their single angelically beautiful, devilishly precocious child, whom they nevertheless doted upon. M. Enjolras was a wealthy yet private man and his wife rather reclusive, so their son was cloistered away, his only company the philosophy books in his father’s extensive library. So the young Enjolras child grew up solemnly, a discerning light that transcended his years always glowing behind his eyes. 

The boy did everything he could to understand the Revolution. His parents, scarcely more than children themselves when it happened, would tell him very little, so Enjolras could do nothing but read about it. He’d beg the servants for stories and sometimes they would bring him old newspaper clippings describing the events. He asked questions only when he didn’t understand something, which was rare. The boy had scared off more tutors than his father was willing to admit with his intense stare and profound belief in fairness. When young Enjolras heard any false word, an idea that didn’t ring completely true, he attacked with the iron sword of his razor sharp mind. 

It came as no surprise, then, when he begged his parents to send him to Paris for the university. They didn’t worry too much about him; he couldn’t get into much trouble. A thin frame and complete apathy towards females bode well for his studies. And Enjolras knew his parents’ thoughts exactly and used them to his advantage.

For a few years, he fulfilled their aspirations for him precisely, making top marks. But Enjolras was much more than an ethereal beauty and a pure soul: inside him there was an idea. This young man had an entire society within his mind, planned to perfection, lacking only in execution. So he found likeminded friends to provide for his new world.

Of these secret plans and organizations his parents knew nothing. The letters they received were perfunctory summaries of his studies, terse lists of the classes he’d taken and occasional stiff anecdotes of life in Paris. They knew their son as well as anyone else did, and realized that unless he had some profound speech to make, his story-telling ability amounted to very little. They were by no means concerned. 

When a family friend told the elder M. Enjolras that trouble seemed to be brewing in Paris, he sent a letter to his son, telling him to be careful. The younger Enjolras hid the missive away in his small apartment. His friends had no idea that he had parents, let alone ones that wrote to him. It was better that his colleagues saw him purely for the republic, he thought, holding a candle up to the envelope. And, of course, that his family knew nothing at all. He suspected vaguely that they were royalists. Despite Enjolras’s nearly obsessive love of justice and fairness, he had no interest in sparking a disagreement with his father.

A week after he burned the letter, Enjolras was dead, his body buried in pauper fashion along with his comrades. His parents received no notice of their son’s demise until they came to visit him after having no letters from him for two months. It took M. Enjolras several days to suss out the few living friends the young man had left, and even longer to extract a straight answer from them. Upon hearing the news, Mme. Enjolras murmured, “There was always fire beneath that ice,” and wept. They found his abandoned apartment, rather dank after two months devoid of humanity. Every available surface was covered with books and papers, and they read through a few, each filled with radical republican ideas. Beneath the bed there was an unfinished letter. 

_Papa et Maman,_  
 _My studies go well. I passed a law exam and-_ (This was struck out in a firm pen-stroke.)  
 _Tomorrow I will fight for the freedom of France. I love Patria as much as any idea that ever flourished in my mind and this is the greatest deed I shall ever do. Forgive me. _  
 _Your son___

They took the scrapped letter back home to the south, and buried it in the old family plot where every Enjolras had been interred since the land had been in the family. Written on the marker was _For Love of Patria._

They never knew who his comrades had been, or how he’d died. Several years later, a striking man called Marius Pontmercy sent a letter asking if they were the relatives of “the noble student called Enjolras.” They replied that they were indeed and a correspondence was maintained for the rest of M. and Mme. Enjolras’s lives. It seemed M. Pontmercy had known their son somewhat and held him in high, albeit distant, esteem. But somehow the keeping of history had fallen to this introspective man, and Marius did his best to maintain the memories of his fallen fellows. M. and Mme. Enjolras asked once if their son had any particularly close friends. Marius replied that all were dead; and though Enjolras was never talkative, he was held in the highest esteem by Combeferre and Grantaire. “But Grantaire,” one letter read, “seemed to me a different sort of esteem. Never much of a student, but he seemed to love your son to his last breath.” The two Enjolrases researched carefully the name of Grantaire, hoping to turn up some family. But none could be found, and they left their son’s death finally to the turning of time. After all, he had been a revolutionary not quite famous.


End file.
